BILLBOARD: God’s Greatest Hits 3
Psalm 31
August 17, 2014
In 1956, someone dethroned the King. Elvis Presley had broken onto the national stage and was taking the world by storm. But in 1956, Guy Mitchell released his hit song, “Singing The Blues,” and it quickly rose to #1 on the Billboard charts and stayed there for nine weeks, which was no small feat when you were competing with Elvis. As it turns out, Guy Mitchell wasn’t the only singer to release “Singing the Blues.” That same year, Marty Robbins recorded it. Over the next forty years, numerous stars would record it including Tommy Steele, Jerry Lee Lewis and Paul McCartney. In fact, it was one of the most covered and recorded songs of the last fifty years.Here is Guy Mitchell singing his biggest hit:
What a great song. It’s so memorable and so simple. Oddly, it is an upbeat sounding song, but the words tell a different story. It sounds like it should be about the glories of love, but it turns out to be about its heartaches, of being abandoned and left alone. Yet it is resiliently upbeat, almost as if the singer knows something that we don’t. I think this song was recorded over and over again because everyone can identify with the idea of singing the blues, of being so low but with a tinge of resiliency. Some songs just make sense. S, some songs stick in your head, and then everyone borrows their words because they apply to so many of our lives.
Such is the case with Psalm 31. It has been covered and rerecorded a few times too. It is quoted elsewhere in the Bible in Psalm 71. Jonah quotes it, Jeremiah quotes it six times, it is quoted by Paul and by Stephen. It is really an early version of singing the blues.
Psalm 31: 1-4
Here is what is interesting; some Psalms have specific labels, titles, places and times to be used. There are Psalms to be sung at the dedication of the temple, songs to be sung on the way to the temple, songs to be sung with flutes, sometimes prayers, sometimes poems and many times as songs for the director of music. This is one of those songs to for the director of music to be used for worship. This is an odd worship song. It’s really about despair and desperation. This song is desperate and torn open. The language throughout is from a person at the bottom of life. It’s really, someone singing the blues, and it resonated with people.
That’s why it was copied, borrowed and quoted throughout the Old and New Testaments, because it spoke to people. It was something they knew and could appreciate. Despite the desperation in these words, it is upbeat, because it is a worship song. How can you sing the blues and still be resilient? How can you be so utterly low, and yet have tears of desperation laced with hope?
I am sure many of you, like me, were saddened this last week with the death of Robin Williams. How can a man who produced so many laughs die in such a moment of profound sadness and aloneness? I read a great blog by writer Anne Lamott that was deeply insightful. She started by saying this:
“It is about times like today when the abyss is visible and we cannot buy cute area rugs at IKEA to truck out the abyss. Our brother Robin fell into it yesterday. We are all staring at the abyss today.
I called my Jesuit friend the day after the shootings in Newtown, stunned, flat, fixated, scared to death: “"Is there any meaning in the deaths of twenty 5 and 6 year old children?”"
Tom said, “"Not yet.”"
And there is no meaning in Robin’'s death, except as it sheds light on our common humanity, as his life did. But I've learned that there can be meaning without things making sense.”
There can be meaning without things making sense. That phrase is at the heart of the idea of singing the blues. It speaks to the uneasy idea that despite our trust in God, desperate circumstances can make us wail without much resolution. We can look into the abyss of whatever darkness is encroaching and sing a worship song that is mysteriously upbeat and yet seasoned with sadness.
What does it look like for a Christian to sing the blues, to find hope in the midst of the abyss, to find God’s hand in the midst of the rising flood? This is especially true in a week like this. If it weren’t enough that Christians were being persecuted and slaughtered in Iraq, if it weren’t enough to watch the unsteady brinkmanship in the Ukraine, if it wasn’t enough to watch the Ebola virus continue decimating a part of the world that already has so little, it was enough to see a teenager gunned down in Missouri at the hands of men who were supposed to protect him.
All this is without the addition of any of the stories that you have lived this week. Be it the death of loved ones, the pain of broken relationships, financial tsunamis or declining health. There is enough content in this room to sing a thousand verses of singing the blues. How can we turn singing the blues into a song of praise? How can this laundry list of problems be intertwined with hope?
The answer comes in Psalm 31. But before we get there, you have to understand why this Psalm is important to unlocking praise in the midst of singing the blues.
I was reading an article this week about how the music of our youth stays with us. Mark Joseph Stern wrote an article called Neural Nostalgia. He examined the phenomenon of how certain songs stick with us from our youth. For some reason, no music really compares to the tunes of our teenage years, and it’s not because objectively those songs are better than our modern music. During those formative years, with brain paths and memories being formed, paired with a ton of hormones, the songs of our youth get seared into our brains.
I tell you that, because the Psalms were the songs of Jonah’s youth and Jeremiah’s youth, Paul’s youth, Stephen’s youth and Jesus’ youth. Any observant Jew knew these Psalms backwards and forwards, especially the ones that were listed for the director of music to use during worship. All of them had sung the blues as youth and now as adults, it was wired into their brain and ready to be recalled.
That brings us back to the text, verses one through four1-4 are full of anguish and then verse five ties them together across the New and Old Covenants.
Psalm 31:5
Does that sound familiar to anyone?The psalmist often uses the phrase “my soul” such as “I lift up my soul to you.” The Hebrew word for soul is nepesh, which means life force. It is the heart of your physical being. The word here for spirit is ruah. The ruah is the part of you that was given by God and returns to God when you die. This statement, into your hands I commit my ruah is not simply saying I trust you with what happens during my living breathing life. I…it is a trust that goes beyond this life. It is the idea that if you falter in this life, the Father will catch you in the life to come. This is not a hope in the redemption of your physical earthly needs; this is the long view, the ultimate big picture.
When the psalmist says, I entrust to you my ruah and not just my nepesh,…he is saying, “I trust you even if it means losing my life. I need your protection. B…be my fortress and my refuge.…. Bbut failing all that, catch my ruah in the life to come.” This is a statement of complete surrender to God’s bigger plan, that there is meaning even when you can’t make sense of it. That is key for a believer to sing the blues, to stand on the edge of the abyss and trust that God’s plan is good even if you can’t see it.
David wais at the bottom of life when he wrote these words. You have to slide into his sandals for just a moment. We don’t know exactly what the context for this Psalm was but David had many trying years. He was anointed by Samuel to be the next King of Israel, but that didn’t happen immediately. And so the sitting king, Saul, tried to kill David multiple times. I…in his jealous rage, Saulhe thought maybe if he could kill the anointed one, then God’s plan would be thwarted. If the chosen king could be put to death, then he could triumph and maintain his own plans. Maintain his autonomy and kingship.
You have to imagine David is recalling that oil spilling down the top of his head and dripping off his chin. In a rush of fear and exhilaration, he is trusting in God’s perfect plan. Years later, he is clinging to life, being hunted down, living in caves, barely subsisting on what he can find. He is waking up in a terror with every sound of cracking branches thinking that an assassin is sneaking up to take his life. His call for a refuge was very real and visceral. Then he has the faith to say, “Into your hand, I commit my ruah.” He is saying, “I thought the plan was for me to be king,but I don’t see that happening here. I thought you would triumph through your promise of making a nobody a king, but I don’t see that happening. I thought I would be king, a big part of that is living, but my ruah is yours. If I fall in this life,…if life as I seeaw it falls apart, I trust in the long view. I trust in your greater purposes. I can’t make sense of it now, but I know there is meaning in it because you have my ruah.”
NASA is currently working on a super telescope called Advanced Telescope Large Aperture Space Telescope or ATLAST for short. They hope to unveil ATLAST in 2018, and it will make the Hubble Telescope look like a kid’s toy. The purpose of the creation of ATLAST is to help accomplish the thirty-year plan of NASA including three things: are we alone in the universe? How did we get here? And how does the universe work? While this is a stunning technological feat and goal, I see it as indicative of the human condition. With our best efforts, we are no longer just trying to see really far. W - we are grasping for answers. A - are we alone? How did we get here? How does it all work?
All of our best efforts are ultimately wrapped up in seeing beyond what is right here in front of us. Of answering big questions about why and where and how. But no matter how great ATLAST is there will always be the pursuit of a bigger telescope because no matter how great our technology or science, we won’t ever be able to see far enough. Our questions will always be partially unanswered b. Because all we can really see is what is right in front of us. That is why “into your hands I commit my ruah” is such a profound statement. You’re saying, “No matter how far I think I can see, I am not promised to make sense of this. I can stand at the edge of the abyss, but I am not promised loose ends being tied up. I am not promised a finale wherein I see how all the dots connect. Why all of my suffering mattered. What it accomplished.”
But you can sing the blues as worship. You can sing out to God, and the sooner you can come to a place where your ruah is entrusted to him, the more freedom and joy you will find. Hopefully, God will give you nuggets of insight along the way. Hopefully, you will see beauty emerge from ashes and redemption rise out of ruin. But if you can release your ruah and submit to God that his view is further than yours, that his ways are higher than yours, then everything changes.
According to Luke’s Gospel, these were the final words of Jesus. The man who was to be the next King of Israel was hanging on a cross. All of his disciples believed he was the long awaited Messiah King. In the same way, the evil one’s plan was if he could somehow kill the heir to the throne that he could continue on as prince of this world. Can you imagine the darkness of that moment? How little sense it made to those who believed. It was a ghastly tableau. This man bled out and suffocated in agony. This man on whom all of their hopes were placed died right in front of them. Before he breathed his last, he sang those words that they all knew, “Into your hands I commit my ruah.God I submit to the long view, to the bigger plan that I can’t see. I can sing the blues and trust that you know the bigger picture.”
Further down in Anne Lamott’s article, she wrote this:
In Newtown, as in all barbarity and suffering, in Robin's death, on Mount Sinjar, in the Ebola towns, the streets of India's ghettos, and our own, we see Christ crucified. I don't mean that in a nice, Christian-y way. I mean that in the most ultimate human and existential way. The temptation is to say, as cute little believers sometimes do, “Oh it will all make sense someday.” The thing is, it may not.
This is not a hopeless statement but a statement of the world as our faculties allow us to see it. We don’t have the long view. Our vision is hopelessly myopic. We can only see what is right in front of us and hopefully what we want to happen next. That brings us back to the phrase that we have found in our study of the Psalms over the last few weeks, “for your name’s sake.” It is smack dab in the middle of this cry to God. Lead for your name’s sake. Accomplish this victory for your name’s sake. As I told you in week one, when God makes promises, he keeps them. Not because we keep up our side of the bargain (because we never do.) He keeps his promises for his own name’s sake. To prove that he is trustworthy and reliable even when we are not. To prove to a watching world that despite our best efforts to self sabotage or the evil one’s attempts to thwart God’s plans, that his promises are true, that his plans cannot be deterred that his name is trustworthy.
All wrapped up with this idea of committing your ruah to God is this idea of his name’s sake. You are not submitting your ruah just because you have no other choice. You submit your ruah because he is trustworthy. Despite long odds, time and again in the Bible when God makes a promise,he sees it through. Despite opposition, despite our own sabotage, despite the evil one’s efforts, he sees it through. Abraham was promised a child and despite physical limitations, a nonagenarian had a child named Isaac. Joseph was shown a bright future, of becoming one of the most powerful men in the world, and despite being thrown in the pit, being falsely accused, and languishing in prison, God saw it through. Time and again, God’s promises are met with huge opposition, and he sees them through for his name’s sake. Every story in the Bible points to this truth. God keeps his promises. He sees things through for his glory. We are the benefactors of his promises being kept time and again.
Jesus made a promise to his followers and thus put his name on it. He told his disciples in John 14 that he was going to prepare a place for us, a landing spot in the life to come. He put his name on that promise, and he validated it by raising from the dead on the third day. On crucifixion Friday, you have to imagine it was hard to see. It was hard to make any sense of how this Son of God could now be hanging lifelessly in front of the masses. But Resurrection Sunday reminds us that his name is great and trustworthy. That he sees things through every time.
Some of you today, are having a hard time seeing Sunday because Friday is bearing down on you. Or maybe Saturday is washing over you. My simple plea is for you to trust his good name, despite what you can see, despite what your senses tell you, despite what you feel. Trust in the long view. Commit your ruah to him, and believe that he will catch you in this life or the next. Some of you will get resolution in this lifetime. You’ll get to see Sunday. For some of you, cancer won’t be the end of the story in your family. Your loved one will be healed. Redemption will be visible. For some of you, God will bring deliverance and your relationship will be perfectly reconciled. When that happens, cherish it. But until then and even if it doesn’t happen in your timing, even if you can’t see it on the horizon,you have hope. If you commit your ruah to him, then the victory is yours because he is faithful, because he will bring meaning out of it.
In the meantime, it’s ok to sing the blues. It’s okay to cry out to God, because that is part of worship. That is how Job could say, “Yeah those he slay me, yet will I trust him, because my ruah is his. My plans are in his hands. I defer to the longer view.” Melvin Endsley wrote the song “Singing the Blues.”At a young age, Melvin contracted polio and although he survived, he was restricted to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. For most of his childhood, Melvin lived alone in a children’s hospital for the disabled. He had a reason to sing the blues. His only friend was the radio in his room and that is where he developed a love of music. Melvin had a great voice, and he wanted to become a famous musician, but he lived in the era of Elvis and Marty Robbins and Guy Mitchell, and his plans never came to fruition. But he did write, . And his song, “Singing the Blues” was recorded over a 100 times and has been played on the radio over three million times.